Sunday, May 04, 2008

The Party of the Troops.

WASHINGTON — In October 2004, the United States Army issued an urgent bulletin to commanders across Iraq, warning them of a deadly new threat to American soldiers. Because of flawed electrical work by contractors, the bulletin stated, soldiers at American bases in Iraq had received severe electrical shocks, and some had even been electrocuted.

The bulletin, with the headline “The Unexpected Killer,” was issued after the horrific deaths of two soldiers who were caught in water — one in a shower, the other in a swimming pool — that was suddenly electrified after poorly grounded wiring short-circuited.

And the company responsible for the “flawed electrical work”? Come on, take a guess. I bet you’ll never, ever, never guess.

American electricians who worked for KBR, the Houston-based defense contractor that is responsible for maintaining American bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, said they repeatedly warned company managers and military officials about unsafe electrical work, which was often performed by poorly trained Iraqis and Afghans paid just a few dollars a day.

But it gets better — or more fucking horrifying if, you know, you’re a compassionate human being and not a profit-sucking, war-profiteering, slogan-spouting, Republican-backed multinational corporation fronted by hypocrites.

One electrician warned his KBR bosses in his 2005 letter of resignation that unsafe electrical work was “a disaster waiting to happen.” Another said he witnessed an American soldier in Afghanistan receiving a potentially lethal shock. A third provided e-mail messages and other documents showing that he had complained to KBR and the government that logs were created to make it appear that nonexistent electrical safety systems were properly functioning.

KBR itself told the Pentagon in early 2007 about unsafe electrical wiring at a base near the Baghdad airport, but no repairs were made. Less than a year later, a soldier was electrocuted in a shower there.

Hmmmmm ... KBR, now that rings a bell. I wonder where I’ve heard of them before? Oh yeah, I remember. From those troop-hating moonbats at ThinkProgress:

This sort of refusal to acknowledge and correct errors seems to be standard operating procedure within KBR, unfortunately. Former employee Jamie Leigh Jones revealed that after she was gang-raped by co-workers, not only did the company place her “under guard in a shipping container,” but warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she would lose her job. In an opposite situation, a KBR employee who was “busted by the military” for looting in Iraq was “given a promotion.”

Similarly, Bunnatine “Bunny” Greenhouse, who oversaw contracts for the Army Corps of Engineers, told the Senate in 2005, that KBR represented the “most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career.” Reflecting the Pentagon’s efforts to protect KBR, Greenhouse was demoted almost two months to the day after voicing that critique.

6 comments:

This report does not meet minimal standards of truthiness. Therefore, I will not dignify it with a response.

Furthermore, KBR is not just the vice-president's subsidiary, it is an important investor in the Bush-Cheney election campaigns and the Republican Party in general. It is not the mission of the United States Government to pick nits from the most important investors in the Republican Party. Finally, there probably wouldn't even be a war in Iraq today if it had not been for the support KBR and Halliburton gave Bush-Cheney in 2004.

See this is why we need companies like KBR. The Iraqis just can't handle the rebuilding the infrastructure themselves, look what happens when they are hired to do a job. It is so apparent that Saddam obliviously tortured all the good electrician's and turned them into WMD and smuggled them out of Iraq and into Syria where they are hiding in underground bunkers. It is our duty to make sure that compaines like KBR are there to rebuild Iraq because the Iraqis can't do it themselves.